Collective Trauma: The Fallout 8

I`m thinking this morning, in the very wee hours while I am seated here in front of my laptop, of how my understanding of friendship has evolved and changed over the years. I can`t say that my journey or my pattern of life has been anything normal, because my life did not take the typical trajectory. I have never been what is called middle class. I have always been poor, not because I didn`t work hard enough but because God had other plans for me. I was not able to go on in school beyond two incomplete years in community college. I was not about to marry or partner off with someone and have kids. I knew that God was calling me to live in a way that was completely devoted to him and his work. So I worked in low-wage employment as a home support worker for most of my twenties and a lot of my thirties, caring for the sick, the dying, the frail elderly and the mentally ill. I could not afford to take courses in health care or nursing because my circumstances were such that I could not rely on my parents for help and I was living alone, obligated to pay the rent on time every month. For this reason I had to work every day. Because taking care of people who are suffering is also draining and challenging work, I did not have the energy leftover for night school. I know this, because I tried it. I had to work well with my clients, or I would have to work well in my studies. But I didn't have enough strength or energy to be able to do both. But this is all part of the Collective Trauma that is our most basic human experience and heritage. I really wanted to be present with others, but I wasn't terribly discerning about whom. There were reasons for this. I grew up feeling unloved and rejected by peers and by my own brother. From age nine to fifteen, life was often for me an absolute solitary hell. I came to understand that anyone, by offering me the gift of their friendship, was doing my a huge favour of which I was less than worthy. Perhaps this is why I became so undiscriminating in my choices of friends. Or should I say, that I would simply let people choose me for their friend then go along for the ride. As a teenage Jesus freak I was taught to love everyone, without showing favouritism, because God is love and God welcomes all. I still believe this to this day. And this is the other reason why I am not choosy about people who come into my life, unless of course they pose a clear danger to my life, health or safety, but even that bit of discrimination I have had to learn over the years. It has been one turbulent ride. So, I went from person to person, and generally they would be the ones to end the friendship, or to go away, or to just become too busy with other people and activities to have time or room to include me in their lives. And I just kept reaching out to others. Then, in a period of extreme exhaustion, I became for the first time in my life, picky. During my time of homelessness, a lot of people did help and support me. But some became abusive. They had become so used to viewing me as a support person in their lives that they couldn't bear to see me broken or needy so they turned against me. Some tried to abuse me sexually. Men. Not men who identified as gay, but certainly men who didn't want to turn down an easy opportunity. So, I lost a lot of friends and I became very cautious after that about whom I would let into my life. I think I became over-cautious and I am trying now to return to some sense of balance with people. It still doesn't matter much to me what we have in common because we have our humanity in common and as long as there is some mutual respect and indulgence over our differences, my current friends and I for the most part get along rather well. Some find me rather difficult and there is at times conflict, but that is because I don't let them get away with their crap, they know this, appear to appreciate this, and they are also assured that there will be a hug after the ass-kicking. And this is also reciprocal. But I see friendship as two things: one is, it is not about having friends, it is about being a friend to others. This makes friendship a verb. It is something you do. The drawback to this, of course, is that not every friend is going to reciprocate the love and this often leads to unbalanced relationships. It is an occupational hazard that has to be accepted and taken in stride if we wish to be friends to others as Christ is friend to us. This still causes me a lot of pain because it means that usually I am the less selfish party and I often end up feeling used and exploited by people who have no desire really to give anything but to simply take, take, and take some more. But this is also inevitable and I find that by setting boundaries and by carefully stewarding the amount of attention I give these people that things still turn out better. I just can`t reasonably expect that they are going to be as generous as I am. The other aspect of friendship that is important to me is that it builds community, especially at a time when we're becoming more balkanised and more fragmented than ever, thanks to technology and the postmodernist education they are giving in the arts and humanities that polarizes people apart from one another as aggrieved groups and categories rather than as persons who need desperately to transcend their differences and learn to forgive, connect and bond as human beings. For this reason, I have come to see friendship as a sacred responsibility. While respecting other people's space and individuality, to still do what I can and in my power to try to draw others, and by extension, myself, out of ourselves and to connect and touch one another's lives in ways that are both healing and life-affirming, and to help reduce the sense of isolation that always threatens to envelop us. That's all for now, Gentle Reader. Thanks for reading. And no comments, please.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 7

Trust is key to forming healthy relationships. I just heard a documentary on the radio about why men have a lot more trouble forming and sustaining friendships than women. They went through the usual stereotypes of male toxicity and what it seems to come down to is that men, especially in the middle and upper middle classes, are expected to compete well, and if you are going to compete well, then there must also be an enemy or at least a rival against whom to compete, and some kind of prize or reward awaiting the winner and then the winner takes all. It's that usual type A alpha male garbage that insulates people from real intimacy, real friendship, and real healing and growth. Or it could be called the fear of looking weak, since for men and for women too who want to succeed in the corporate world, strength, cunning, and brutality are everything because winning is everything. No tears or gushy vulnerability here. you will get squished in a nanosecond. Like a lost little slug, or like an earth worm languishing on a summer sidewalk. Now, I'm not a huge proponent about binary cis gender, not being in that category myself. And I am also aware of the particularly unfortunate direction a lot of women are taking in their grasp for equality where, instead of bringing to the table what makes women so strong and viable so that men and others might also benefit, they simply transform themselves into men wearing skirts as they fight and bully their way up the corporate ladder. This, of course is a generalization and it's applications does have its limits. I am going to propose another idea. Can we forget about gender altogether? I mean, besides the fact that one of the human race can pee while standing? I for one, haven't really fond much of that gender divide in my friendships, though I also reckon that the men I am fortunate to know as long term friends are like me sick of the stereotype and simply want people in their lives with whom they can connect, open up to, and feel safe. Perhaps it's because I have never bought into any of the stereotypes: I have never really thought of myself as a gendered being, I never married, farmed babies and settled down in a career. I have always tried to live as openly as possible my faith and my values. And, yes, I have certainly run across plenty of men who are prisoners to the stereotypes and they are very hard people to reach, but some of them have also sent me messages for help, because they certainly aren't flouring in that prison. But to break out of that kind of socially constructed jail, or to even not get caught in it, takes enormous reserves of energy and courage and there are always going to be risks involved. For me it comes back to a matter of trust. And this is more than simply finding people you can trust or to learn how to trust. It is simply trusting because that is what makes us human. We all have a need to trust, and naturally a fear of getting burned by those we trust and the supreme act of courage here is to simply give reign to that natural instinct to trust. Which also means overcoming fear, and fear is the big one that holds us prisoner. I have mentioned on these pages, gentle Reader, that we re all collective survivors of trauma, didn't I. And fear is the number one wound that festers and suppurates among us. Of course, the secret to getting over fear is love, and by accepting love into our lives, and I ain't talking romance here, but love, which comes from God, the Big Love of the Universe. Oh, that's right, a lot of you don't believe. And you don't want to believe? Poor dears. I'm afraid you get nothing. Until you decide to open up, that is. That's all for today. Thanks for reading, Gentle Reader. And one more time, NO COMMENTS, PLEASE!

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 6

It is difficult living in a culture that doesn't accept what or who you are. I am writing here as a Christian. This, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia or opposition to women's rights. I am in favour of same sex marriage and consider my values to be mostly compatible with feminism. I mean, rather, a culture that hates Christians and Christianity in general, not because we are opposed or not on certain values but because we live at very different and opposed wavelengths. This is very difficult to explain to non-Christians, who will simply write us off as contrary, difficult and judgemental. There is also a lot of slanderous nonsense out there about us that people swallow, because people don't tend to think very much, nor with any depth or nuance, and what makes things even worse is the way some Christians themselves irresponsibly promote and live out those same negative stereotypes. But there are some major differences that make co-existing difficult. I am thinking especially of how we view money, power, community, materialism and sexuality. In terms of money, we are warned in Scripture that the love of money is the root of all evil. That wealth, this world's goods are to be shared, and that really we are to leave behind money values for the greater values of the kingdom of God. This also makes us rather socialist in our economics, even if that "s's word flies in the face of our embarrassing fundamentalist-evangelical brethren who live south of the border and, unfortunately, here also in Canada. But the message of the Gospels, in terms of money, is very communitarian. It is all about sharing. This doesn't really fit very well in a culture where unbridled greed and capitalism seem to run everything. If we are poor, it isn't because we're lazy. I myself have worked hard all my life and I am still poor. Why? For lots of reasons, circumstances and doors being slammed in my face among them, but also because I was never lured by a huge paycheque into accepting work that ran against my ethics as a Christian. I could only find work in low paid home support and other positions of care and support for the vulnerable, and this way, despite the low pay, I was working and receiving income for performing duties that were completely in line with my Christian values of love, justice and mercy. In terms of power, I accept the validity of only one real power in the universe. That power is God, the maker and sustainer and inhabitant of all that is in the universe, the world and in our own human selves. The world that we live in is full of god wannabes and this is where things become a little problematic. While I will respect and accept secular law, I will accept it only insofar as it does not contradict the law of love which is to serve the God of the Universe. So, if my government says that Muslims are going to be banned from public life (which I don't think is likely to happen), and I am in a position where I can hire a Muslim, I will hire a Muslim. If our government decides that Latin American refugees have to be sent back to the US before they are kicked out of that country, I will harbour and protect a Latino refugee if I am able. And on it goes. In terms of community, the ethos of the day is towards a fragmenting individuality that excludes and shuts out others and glorifies the individual as its own little god. Completely contrary to everything that Christians value and hold dear. We hold that we are all in this together and that we need one another to rise up and to remain intact. This thinking does not bode well in a culture of narcissism where it's all about achieving your personal best and no one else matters but you. I especially see this out on the sidewalks with joggers, the way they hog space, show absolutely no respect or consideration for pedestrians and basically behave as though they own the pavement, and they get away with it because they embody the very narcissism that our society has come to deify. Materialism is all about worshipping things instead of God. Christians don't do that. We worship God, the very God whom you reject, not because he doesn't exist, but because you cannot live with the inconvenience of knowing that he exists and that he is also calling you. In terms of sexuality: well, pop culture seems to be turning everyone into sluts and pigs. I really got heat from a couple of individuals last week (it also jeopardized both friendships) for writing in a cavalier way about two very obnoxious Mexican girls sexually objectifying men, and I called them both on it in Spanish. I was accused of "slut-shaming", which is a very stupid and useless term but really charged and loaded with emotional baggage. As a Christian, I believe that people in general are really abusing themselves and one another sexually. The hook up culture is particularly insidious and it simply cheapens people as objects of personal gratification. Yet no one seems to think there is anything wrong with this. A few years ago in an Anglican parish with a huge gay contingent I caught heat for speaking against church involvement in the gay pride parade, not because I have issues about gay marriage. I fully support gay marriage. But the whole pride industry glorifies wholesale a kind of sexual licentiousness and promiscuity that is completely incompatible with Christian teaching and for this reason I don't think that we should be associated with this. Those people were completely incapable of seeing nuance, wrote me off as a dangerous homophobe, and to this day I am not welcome in that parish. Because no one seems to understand that sex itself is absolutely sacramental, not to be wasted on exploitation nor objectifying others, and solely for the health and wellbeing of long term and committed and loving relationships, whether between a man and a woman, between two women or between two men. I am still amazed that no one seems to get the distinction, and equally amazed that I am amazed about this. That's all for now, Gentle Reader. Thanks for reading. And, no comments, please.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 5

Of course, we could do better. We could always do better. I remember a time when art was widely considered to be the ultimate and purest expression of the very best and the highest and most sublime of our humanity. Rather like a distillation of the very essence of the best and the highest to what we really aspired to, as well as capturing a shimmering glimpse of the paradise that we all lost. I think a lot of this changed with Picasso and his contemporaries, who decreed that a painting must be full of razor blades and for whom it wasn't art if it wasn't full of distortion since distortion and displacement and fragmentation were all thematic to the multi-tiered violence that was the twentieth century. So then it could be said that art went from describing our lost and fleeting ideal to showing forth our broken and ugly humanity in its raw and violent form. Or something like that. Aesthetic art came to be distrusted and despised as kitsch or as twee escapism, and some of our most prominent contemporary artists who couldn't paint their way out of a wet paper bag have gone on record as calling aesthetic or beautiful art weak, and therefore unworthy, and ugly, discordant expressions as strong, and therefore worthy. I am an artist, but not an art expert. And I know that I am not the best at what I do and that my work is primarily aesthetic, which could be why the art world isn't particularly interested in me and I can live that one down okay. Still, I would prefer to look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or one of Monet's water lily paintings over any of Picassos ugly portraits or Andy Warhol's soup cans. I think that we do ourselves a great disservice when we reject the beautiful, because we are also spitting on the best that we are. Freud famously called art collective neurosis. I think that it's more than that. It distils our essence, yes, and that essence can be very horrific or noble, or both. I imagine that our artistic expression is at its best when we integrate the two contrary realities, because our human history is something that is very ugly, brutal and violent, but we also aspire to something better and to be better and to be reminded by the prophets and sages of old that their is a Deity, more than just a cosmic CEO who commands our attention and our loyalty, and that our whole reason for being in this multigenerational funk that we call human history is because we are so thoroughly divorced from the creator and sustainer of this universe and all that is in it, including us. Atheists, and especially fundamentalist atheists, or born-again atheists as I like to call them are really having a field day with the God is dead or never was nonsense and really bend over backwards to discredit faith and people of faith whom, by the same token, often leave ourselves wide open for ridicule. But why do they discredit us and what we believe, if simply to justify their demand that they are the controllers and masters and not God, and that how dare any deity presume to tell us how to run our lives. except, that was never the idea, and whether we like it or not, the Deity does indeed run our lives because God fills and inhabits everyone and everything in this whole cosmos and beyond, whether we like it or not and the only thing that we have to call our own is our human will and we have only the analogy of Charlton Heston's claim that only from his cold dead fingers will they ever pry out his gun. Well, Gentle Reader, Charlton Heston is dead now, no longer has a gun to pry out of his fingers, warm and living or cold and dead, and one day we will also be dead. We don't even want someone else to be in control of our moment of death. Since it is going to happen anyway it has become in vogue in progressive countries to legalize and legitimize doctor assisted suicide, with all kinds of lovely excuses and reasons, particularly that people want to avoid a particularly painful and humiliating end to their days here on earth. Fair enough. But I wonder if this also says something about our desire to be God instead of God, for us to control everything and for the simple reason that we will not cede the control of our lives to the One who gave us life, sustains us, inhabits us and to whom we owe absolutely everything that we are. But this, I believe, is why our humanity is broken, and why we have deteriorated into this sorry state that we are in, indeed, our state has always been sorry because we keep distancing ourselves from the Love that is at the heart of the universe. No wonder we are miserable, and no wonder we never quite seem to get it right. But sometimes we do, and I believe that those are the instances when the light of Christ actually does make it through the cracks in our foundation, and we see beautiful art that takes our breath away, or listen to such music as must have come from another dimension, or we are suddenly ratifying legislation to protect human rights and end poverty without putting an end to the poor. God always gets in past our resistance. But we give ourselves all the credit. No wonder we're screwed. That's all for now. No comments, please.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 4

It`s really difficult writing about the human condition without also somehow implicating myself, because I am human (yes, really!) and I am every bit as part of this condition as everyone else. I am a flawed imperfect self who dwells among other flawed imperfect selves in a very flawed and very imperfect world that of course is going to reflect us. I live in a social housing building because I was not able to compete successfully in the world. Nothing wrong with that, but it does say something about the state of things that we end up having to accept as normal, no matter how harsh and damaging the conditions that we end up having to accept for ourselves. I live next door to a liquor store that has considerably tainted and harmed my neighbourhood, and of course they get away with it because we live in a culture of addiction that glorifies alcohol and accepts alcohol addiction as an already given. Drivers of delivery trucks outside my window in the evenings are allowed to make as much clanging racket as they want, while delivering the precious bottles of booze, because liquor stores are good for the economy, they keep people happy and numb and less likely to complain about how much our governments are selling us down the corporate river, so the rights of business always are given priority over the rights of a poor low-income renter such as myself, because the economy is God in this city and no one cares shit about human beings. Likewise, the morning and daytime racket from construction never ends, and no one cares that this is impacting the physical and mental health of those of us who have to hear it from our apartments day after day. It isn't because people need places to live as a rather stupid individual fatuously put it to me once. Almost all those new construction developments are for well-off buyers who aren't necessarily going to live in them. That's right. It is the greed of the development companies and the greed of the real estate energy that keep the jackhammers going. Those aren't buildings for people on average incomes. a lot of them are offshore millionaires and guess how many, perhaps most of them, became millionaires? can you say money-laundering? but this is what turns the conversation very difficult because it happens that an awful lot of these nefarious millionaires come from China, and Canada carries (and rightly si) a huge burden of collective guilt for the racist and inhumane treatment that was dealt to Chinese Canadians in this country until oh so very recently. Now no one dares to mention Chinese in relation to the money-laundering of real estate because anyone can so easily yell "Racist" and shut down the conversation. Which isn't to say that greed doesn't exist in other venues. Of course it does. So, just now, I have given some concrete and quotidian examples of the damage we are all living with and helping to perpetuate. And it just keeps going on. But, you know, Gentle Reader, I had this dream last night that gives me a little bit of hope. I won't go into a lot of detail as it was all very tangled Boschian and inscrutable, though very real, as my dreams tend to be. Someone was asking me to please explain what is meant by music theory. I offered some rather conventional ideas, but I also mentioned that we should also think of music as heritage. When you hear a piece that was first composed and performed two hundred years ago, such as a Beethoven symphony, or three hundred years ago, like a Bach cantata, we are not listening to something that is two or three hundred years old, but something that has been transformed and made new because we are listening with twenty-first century ears and that is going to somehow transform the music and the experience. The Romantic and Baroque eras suddenly become subsumed into our postmodernist reality and something new and very beautiful is born through the synthesis. So, then, it is not only trauma that is passed on from generation to generation, but also the beauty and spiritual purity of what is best about humans, and this becomes part of the sustaining and renewing force that helps keep our species and our world from going entirely down the toilet. That's all for now. No comments, please.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 3

We humans are a half-baked lot. We are for the most part incomplete. We are usually unhappy, often miserable, seldom satisfied with what we have or with who we are. Especially the spoiled rich kids who live in privileged nations, but this disease of frustrated entitlement appears to have swept the entire world so that now we have substantial middle classes rising in China in India, Mexico, Brazil, to name but a few. And they all want more: they want to eat better food, or should I say, more red meat, which is really quite a destructive thing, both to the human body and the environment; they want nice homes and cars, also bad for the environment, but wonderful for the economy; they want university education for themselves and their children (hopelessly costly, still, unless you are already very well off, or don't mind being in debt for the next twenty years of your life. In the meantime. here at home, we have growing income inequality which is rapidly translating into social unrest. We also are seeing a nasty increase of fragmentation, ill will and hate between disparate and polarized groups. Now, everyone is thin-skinned and easily offended. We have turned into a culture of offence and insult. I began to really notice this when I first heard about cultural appropriation a couple of years back. Now, first of all, I am sympathetic to First Nations people who don't like it when dumb white boys wear ceremonial headdresses at rock festivals, or anywhere else. It looks really stupid and besides it is quite disrespectful. But the outrage that gets expressed also shows a certain lack of...shall we say...emotional maturity? There is nothing wrong with expressing an opinion and certainly there is a lot that is right about showing justified outrage. But to tell someone they can't wear something because it offends you? Or that they cannot say something that runs against your most cherished political, spiritual and/or cultural beliefs and values because it offends you? And instead of trying to leave room for reasonable, well-mannered and vigorous debate and dialogue, you are simply going to scream and holler as loud as you can because you are now an offended victim, they are bullies and your delicate little feelings have been hurt? Oh, but we are also looking at the fallout from generations of attempted cultural and racial genocide and yes this does put a different spin on things. The oppressed have every right to protest against the insensitive behaviour of the oppressors. And the oppressors have to take note, take stock and listen. Does this oblige them to change their behaviour? Probably not. No one should have to start or stop doing anything just because they are feeling shamed and emotionally blackmailed into it. This doesn't mean that change shouldn't happen. Of course it needs to, but it first has to be based on people listening to one another out of mutual respect and this is so often what is lacking in the screaming, hollering and flinging of shit that occurs both online and offline. personally, I don't have a huge issue about cultural appropriation, though I think it's quite dumb and in poor taste for a German to go parading around wearing a Scottish kilt, or a Scotsman to dance polkas while wearing lederhosen. I'm half Scots and half German, by the way. Not as poignant an insult by the way, as the white little dumbass wearing the native headdress. But we still have to cool our rage a little if we want to be heard and respected by others. Otherwise, we come across as perpetual victims throwing tantrums and having meltdowns or psychopathic schoolyard bullies. Or both. In order to understand the tendency towards cultural appropriation, among privileged white Canadians anyway it is also helpful to understand something about the cultural vacuum that many of us live in in this country. Our current prime minister has said that Canada does not have a culture. I am not so sure about this, but he is right in the sense that we don't have a developed cultural identity in this country which leaves a lot of privileged white folk feeling somewhat empty and incomplete. Hence, the desire to appropriate. Not necessarily appropriate (pun intended) but I really think that we all need to cut each other a little slack during these polarized and polarizing times we are living in, show a little more patience and mutual respect, and develop a sense of humour. And maybe also a slightly thicker skin. The current fragmentation that is occurring is only dividing us more. We need to look more for the things we all share in common and really start to focus on finding ways of bringing us together. Without stifling debate of course. We really still need to learn how to actually do dialogue.

Collective Trauma, The Fallout 2

Today, Gentle Reader, I am going to write about privilege. Not specifically White Privilege though that does indeed exist and there is way too much of it. I am thinking more of the Brahmin caste that exists in all countries and in all cultures. The privileged elite. Even though here in Canada they all tend to be overwhelmingly white we now have many honorary Caucasians joining their ranks: persons of Asian, South Asian, African, aboriginal, and other racially visible heritages. Nothing really wrong with that, I suppose, except for one little sticking point. They all, by fiat of economic status, wealth, social connection, and academic success (always achieved by having good family and social status) they get to pick and enjoy the low hanging fruit, they get to sip on the ambrosia of the gods from chalices of solid gold and platinum in their divine Olympus palaces. They have all the wealth and means available to conceal their shame, their wounds, their affliction, their weakness, their nakedness, the very trauma and the festering and bitter fruit of trauma that every single member of the human family has to carry in their genes. Oh, but they lie about it, they dissimulate because the mantra is: "We are special. We are worthy. We are gods. And we are your superiors." Even if their kids are among the thousands of little idiots killing themselves on fentanyl and other lethal drugs usually thought to be the purview of the underprivileged and marginalized. And their mommies and daddies? Well, there's always alcohol. Not just any old booze or plonk, but the good stuff. The best craft beer, the finest imported wines, the best scotch and vodka and Oh! the martinis! How did people possibly live before there were martinis! It is widely known that well off people have longer lives, and enjoy better health throughout their lives than the rest of us. They have at their fingertips all the money they need to purchase the best food, the best health care, the best holidays. the best homes. They go through life completely insulated from the unpleasant realities that poor people have to live with day after day. We don't have access to affordable decent food. Even earning a little bit above minimum wage, as I do, simply means that I can afford to buy a little more broccoli and a few extra strawberries every week. I cannot just wander off to Choices, the yuppie supermarket just five minutes away, or Nestors, the other yuppie supermarket just ten minutes away. I have to go to No Frills, always in other neighbourhoods and I have to plan my shopping routine around my work day and my outings if I am going to have access to cheap, affordable food, and this causes stress, which can also elevate my blood pressure if I'm not careful. Likewise my medications. I cannot afford the exorbitant dispensing fee at the Shopper's Drug Mart just one block from my apartment, so for something affordable I have to go to the No Frills Pharmacy on the other side of town, almost, and likewise, for my other medication to the cancer clinic at the hospital, because otherwise I can't afford these things that are necessary to my health and wellbeing (for my thyroid and to keep a tumour from growing any bigger on my pituitary, if you must know). Lack of privilege, which means lack of money, translates into more stress and anxiety and poorer health outcomes. In the meantime the privileged classes go on their merry way, enjoying life and batting down their neurotic depression and anxiety with one drinky-poo after another, because in the final analysis, they are every bit as fragile, wounded and damaged as the rest of us, and there are very few of them who are going to have the integrity or the presence of mind to openly admit it. We are all in this together, Gentle Reader, and instead of inciting resentment and hate against the privileged classes I am going to recommend instead pity and compassion. They really don't know how damaged they are, and when they do find out they very seldom have the inner fortitude to be able to stand the revelation. We really do need one another, now more than ever. And there has never been a time in my lifetime that people have appeared to be so cut off from one another. But I have hope and sometimes I see little happenings that inspire and encourage me. For example, yesterday on the Skytrain, a nice middle class young woman was seated with her nice middle class young friend. She was eating some kind of snack out of a paper bag. A street fellow seated across from her asked if she would save him the last piece. She gave him the bag and said he could have all that's left. They had a very friendly and warm if brief conversation, then the street fellow got off at the next station. Her friend asked her why she would do that and talk to someone like him. she replied that it's always better to be nice to people. Then I weighed in, and mentioned that the key to having friends is by being one. I thanked her for what she did for that man, and she positively beamed.

Collective Trauma: The Fallout 1

We are all damaged. Everyone of us. No one gets a pass. There is something about our human nature that is simultaneously endearingly resilient and abhorrently stupid and self-destructive. Let's remember that our earliest ancestors, as they came out of Africa, were already survivors of a couple of millions of years of difficulty, danger, trauma. It's going to be in our collective DNA. This is an already given. There has always been a nasty Darwinist streak or tendency towards our way of doing things, even long before Darwin himself was around to theorize about it. There is something about this ancestral collective trauma that has become a kind of systemic galloping violence and we still haven't learned how to put the reins on it. It isn't as if the ones in power, the alphas who get on top and stay on top are any less damaged than the rest of us. They are every bit as wounded and in many cases even worse-off for their lack of empathy and lack of capacity for introspection. And this isn't to say that all alphas are like that as experiments have been conducted to prove that the most successful alphas are also themselves very empathetic, for which reason they are able to win and maintain the loyalty and love of their devoted subjects. But it doesn't always happen this way. Generally we have wounded, damaged and incomplete selves, competing and winning and dominating over other wounded, damaged and incomplete selves. But the damaged people in power have a particularly insidious ace up their sleeve and they use it over and over again with frightening skill and impunity. How it manifests nowadays is in the way that people with mental illness, who live in poverty, with addictions, or are simply stranded in low wage and unskilled or almost unskilled employment (as in my case) are always going to be marginalized, judged, dismissed, despised, oppressed, ignored, forgotten and patronized as the other. You are damaged but we are whole. And for the most part we buy into this nonsense. We internalise it, live it, it becomes part of our collective DNA and we all live or subsist saying in more different ways than can be counted: we are your inferiors. I have seen this play out over and over again in my work, with my housing providers, and with some of my friends. I don't think that any of us does any of these things consciously, deliberately or with malicious intent. It is simply hardwired into us. So, I will find myself being treated by one of my more privileged friends or associates in a way that feels patronizing or classist, and I will react defensively and for a brief moment or two, perhaps for but a nanosecond, we are class enemies. They usually are completely unaware of this dynamic, and the privileged almost always are oblivious to their privilege. But those of us who live at the bottom or on the margins do indeed see it. But it isn't so black and white, or should I say, black and red, since those are the colours of real anger and rage. If I can just get past my near-genetic suspiciousness and distrust, then I will also see and feel where the other is wounded and hurting, and very often we hurt in much the same way. This is why I am able to maintain friendships across the divide, by refusing to let it exist between us, while acknowledging its existence, and by cultivating empathy without preference. I will conclude, Gentle Reader, with an incident I witnessed on public transit yesterday. On the Davie Street bus in the morning there was a ruckus between a quarrelling couple. They both looked socially disadvantaged, possibly or recently homeless, but two very hurting individuals. She was trying to get away from him and he was begging her not to leave him They were both swearing like proverbial troopers. As he got out of his seat to follow her to the door, he almost lost his pants, his shorts literally falling down so everyone could see his bare bum. We did enjoy the entertainment value. I commented to the young man seated next to me that this is also very sad, and there must be a hidden message here. He seemed open to the idea. Then, a mother with a little girl, perhaps four or five years old, got on and sat nearby. The little girl was singing, repeating over and over again the lyrics, "I love you." just outside the bus, the couple was still swearing and raging at each other, and the little girl kept singing. I turned to the fellow next to me and said, "That is the message. The child never stops singing." He seemed to get it. That's all for now, Gentle Reader. No comments, please.

Balancing Act, 25

I think a lot of us are just plain exhausted. The blowback I got on a recent post to me indicates that people would rather just react than think, and this to me suggests being overwhelmed and burned out. I think this is what it is that gets some people to either block out information that they find unattractive or to just simply react from the reptilian brain. We are overwhelmed. I get it. We are all fragile, damaged and needy. Even the oppressors. But I am going to keep on writing this blog, and addressing things because I for one am concerned about the total lack of real critical thinking that is being shown these days in just about everything. Instead of really giving time to ponder and consider what is being said or written we get all kneejerk about things that we don't want to hear, our buttons get pressed and we get triggered. So we at out and go on to the next diversion. I don't think there has ever been a time when we have been so focussed on escapism. Instead of facing our pain we try to get rid of it, when our only route to recovery and healing is going to be by going through the frightening and often harsh light of self-revelation. This is how we grow. But instead we go on numbing ourselves with alcohol, drugs, sex, food, extreme fitness regimes, anything to numb ourselves and feel, if not good, then at least to not feel anything at all. We call this harm-reduction, I suppose. On the other hand, it could be argued that we are too fragile to face hard truths. I'm not so sure about this. I know that in mental health treatment and recovery, for depression and anxiety for instant, the use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs are often an essential, and usually permanent fixture in treatment. Don't feel the pain. Just protect ourselves from having to feel it. But how does this enhance our spiritual and psychological growth into whole people? If we are simply left in our nice medicated warm and stagnant little puddle, how are we going to move beyond those things that threaten and frighten us? How did I do it? By facing the pain and by walking through the fire. It was hell at times, and I think for a while it was actually really harming me in some ways. Especially when I went through a series of breakdowns over the prolonged grief that swept over me over the loss of my family. I held on. I also knew that Jesus was there with me, suffering with me and walking with me through that labyrinth. Perhaps it's because I have a strong faith. Maybe it's because I will trust God to see me through these things. Maybe the problem for many is that they have no faith, no sense of a God who loves and cares for them, and this, Gentle Reader, is what can bring us to a very close approximation of what it can be like to exist in a living and unrelenting hell. That's all for today. And no comments, please

Balancing Act, 24

Okay, Gentle Reader, the gloves are off. First of all, no more comments on this blog, from anyone, please. The privilege has once again been abused and if I see any more comments on this forum, they will be promptly deleted unread. One friendship has just been jeopardized because of this. Now, secondly, I would like to respond to a less than reasonable comment from this morning's post. I was accused, I believe of "slut-shaming" a term that has no meaning and no resonance with me. Being, or behaving like, a slut, regardless of one's gender, is in itself shameful and beneath the human dignity of all parties involved. As humans we are more, much more than our bodies or sexuality, and this too often gets forgotten by some people. Someone also objected about the terminology used to describe my opinion of those two obnoxious Mexican girls I encountered on Friday. Fair enough. Had I not felt so offended and embarrassed by the way they were talking about the penis dimensions of some poor guy I didn't know, then maybe I would be a bit gentler. Or, let's put things in reverse. Had those been two men talking on about some poor woman's vagina, and I referred to them on this page as jerks, pigs or lowlife scum for objectifying a woman behind her back, then I don't think that any of you would bat an eye. In fact, you would all be likely cheering from the peanut gallery. Admit it! And you know something else, Gentle Reader? I never give a pass to men for behaving disgracefully towards women. If I see someone harassing a woman in public, I call them out on it, whether it's four jerks in a four-wheel drive as happened some years ago in Yaletown, when I put my own safety at risk to tell those idiots to stop bothering a young woman, or, just a couple of weeks ago, some other knuckle dragger who was leering carnivorously at a young woman on Howe Street. I looked at him, said "Oink," and that's all it took to get him off her case. So, suddenly it's perfectly fine for women to objectify men? I don't think so. Equal time for equal acts of selfish ignorance. Perhaps I didn't have to refer to those girls as whores, using three words in Spanish when only one would have done, but I, as a man, felt personally violated by their behaviour and I was still venting, and as already mentioned, had I been a woman writing this about dirty pig men, no one would have been offended. May I also remind you that I am a survivor of sexual abuse, sexual and indecent assault and sexual objectification, and I don't care who is doing it to whom, I will come in like a rabid lynx on anyone I catch treating others this way. It seems to me that this whole culture of offence and victimization that has overtaken us has turned an awful lot of you into politically correct thought police. Well, guess what? As I mentioned already, it is not about gender, but about power. Unfortunately, too much power is still being wielded by men, which turns them into oppressors, especially of women. Point taken. But when you have men who are disempowered, the dynamic changes and they are no longer victimizers, but vulnerable, fragile victims. That's right, duckies, even binary cis males (and I am not a binary cis male). Similarly, women in power can and often do become every bit as exploitative and oppressive and cruel as men. Gender has nothing to do with it. It is power dynamics, and power dehumanizes those who have it and they in turn try to use their power to dehumanize the weak and marginalized. We have to start looking at power differently and to reconstruct our way of thinking and interacting to a form that includes instead of excluding and that fosters community instead of hierarchy. We are all equally fragile and equally damaged. It is time to put away those broad brushes that get used to paint everyone into the same category depending on what kind of sexual body parts they were born with, to stop demonizing everyone for their gender, and to start treating people as persons, as individuals, with care, compassion and respect. Perhaps I was being too hard on those Mexican girls, but it is very difficult for my eyes to get moist about privileged young women or men of their ilk. Maybe if I knew them a bit as individuals, but they weren't going to let me get anywhere near them even if I wasn't a threat to them. The door swings both ways, and perhaps even up and down as well, Gentle Reader.

Balancing Act, 23

Friday morning I was enjoying a walk towards Stanley Park when at the stoplight I heard two young Mexican women (I am very familiar with the accent) talking in Spanish, in graphic detail about the dimensions of some guy's boy bits. They were of course talking in Spanish, a language in which I am very fluent, and likely they wouldn't imagine that a man with white skin and blue eyes would understand their beautiful language (it never seems to occur to those people that a lot of Argentinians and some Spanish people also look remarkably like me and their Spanish is sometimes even better!). So as the light was changing I said to them: "Cuidense. Escucho a escondidas. Que tengan un buen dia." Or, Be careful, I can hear what you're saying. Have a nice day. Their faces were quite horrified, they said nothing and just tried to get away from me as fast as they could. My accent in Spanish, by the way, is almost perfect, so they were probably trying to figure out what country I was from. Later that day, a Mexican friend of mine confirmed to me that Mexican girls can be absolute pigs when it comes to their way of talking about men. He also thought it was quite hilarious, as did my Peruvian friend (both men) whom I saw later. Now, there are many different ways of looking at that scenario and I am going to hit it with my best shot. First of all, I am quite sure I was not misunderstanding them. Always, when I say something in Spanish to people who are speaking the language around me, they are if not friendly, then at least cordial and polite. Not those too little rameras (whores in Spanish). Now, they might have thought I was just being a dirty old man. Don't think so. I think it was pretty clear to both those little fulanas (another Spanish word for you-know-what) that I was frankly embarrassed and offended. Of course, they didn't expect that I would know what they were saying because in their experience, only people with mestizo features can speak Spanish, which simply says something about their ignorance and intelligence. You know, when travelling abroad in Latin America I have become so sick and tired of local people trying to speak to me in English even after I have addressed them in perfectly fluent Spanish, that now I just confront them to their face. I tell them, in impeccable Castellano (a fancy-schmancy Spanish word for very correct Spanish, and it's pronounced cah-stay-YAH-no, or if you live in Argentina or Uruguay, it would sound more like cah-stay-ZHAH-no), "Perdoneme, pero ni el color de mi piel, tampoco mis ojos azules, son indicadores de mi idioma, y para tomar tal assumpcion es algo racista", or Excuse me, but my skin colour and my blue eyes have nothing to do with what language I speak, and your making that kind of assumption is rather racist. That's right, Gentle Reader, I pull no punches and I take no prisoners. I think both those little putas (same word) knew they were being presumptuous little idiots and couldn't deal with the embarrassment of being called on their appalling bad manners, especially by someone who was so obviously the other. And I have no doubt at all that I was also really messing with their heads as they were trying to figure out if I might be from Spain, or Uruguay or maybe Colombia.... Another thing is, I get really sick and tired of hearing men being demonized by women, especially now in this age of "Me Too." This is not to excuse Harvey Wine Stain and other such pigs for their incredibly atrocious and reprehensible sexual exploitation of women. But, hey you guys, this has absolutely nothing to do with gender, okay? Now, Gentle Reader, I will give you a minute or two to stop choking on your Shreddies before I continue...better now? This kind of piggish behaviour is all about power, and it just happens that men, for all kinds of historical and cultural reasons, have way more than their share of power. Not their gender, neither testosterone makes them behave badly towards women. It has been found over and over again that when women have power they are every bit as apt at abusing it and oppressing and yes, sexually exploiting those underneath them as men are. It is an equal opportunity problem. I also happen to know, being a male myself (even if I don't subscribe to or fit in the gender binary) that men are every bit as squeamish and modest as women are, and what President Dump, the Great Deplorable in the Outhouse (whoops, I mean White House) tries to dismiss as locker room talk is actually not typical of how men usually talk among themselves. It happens, yes, but not every day, and quite frankly, most of us would prefer to talk about something else. Gender binaries are a kind of prison and we need badly to break out of this. Long ago, for myself anyway, I rejected any concept of gender, because I found all the definitions and roles of masculinity and femininity to be equally wanting and equally bankrupt. I also found myself rejecting power, refusing both to wield power, and to not let anyone oppress me. It's been a very interesting dance but essential for living as a free person. Neither male nor female, but fully and completely human. Neither master nor servant, but master over myself, and servant to God and humankind. Still choking on your Shreddies, darling?

Balancing Act, 22

Has anyone else been noticing lately how much more difficult it is in a city like Vancouver to find quiet public space, out in nature for example? As a friend pointed out to me we are getting greater and greater crowds of tourists each year, it seems, and they do impact on our space. Tourism of course is a highly lucrative industry, creates jobs (many badly-paid), and keep the economy growing, or that's the conventional wisdom. But we live in an economic system that remains resolutely divorced from the people it is purported to serve, and the lion's share of the pickings goes to the very wealthy and the rest of us have to scramble for crumbs. Or, I suppose we could be a bit Pollyanna about it and think of the crumbs as croutons and add them to our Caesar salad. If we can afford the rising price of romaine, that is. Do they still make Caesar salads, Gentle Reader? They are such a seventies and eighties concoction, but I still think they're wonderful. So, like it or not we have lots of tourists, as well as a growing population of well-off people who want to live here. And it's supposed to be good for us. Well, Gentle Reader, our homelessness statistics don't appear to be budging much these days, and our sidewalks are literally choked with beggars. One friend of mine who lives in Latin America who was here last winter did comment in a recent Skype visit that most of our beggars here in Vancouver are young and healthy. I had to explain to him that he's half-right. They are young. And of course, being young, they are going to look healthy: even if the majority of them are living with mental illness, trauma from child abuse, addictions, brain injuries, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and autism or Asperger's, attention deficit and hyper-active attention deficit disorder, not to mention that from subsisting on a street diet there are also going to be issues of malnutrion as well as other health concerns that come due to chronic lack of sleep and chronic stress from trying to survive outside every day. Oh, and did I also mention that some of them also work for a living? But on minimum wage, try finding a place to live in this city. And if you're not really work ready because of all the concerns I have already mentioned, then let's just see how long you can keep a job. Even though our cheap labour market is being hollowed out because life has become too expensive in this city, employers remain fussier than ever and no one is just going to hire a panhandler off the street. They would rather invite foreign workers from the Philippines to do the work instead, and they are not as likely to complain about low pay and bad work conditions since things are still a lot worse back home for those people, especially now that they have Rodrigo Duterte (Duterte the Dirty) at the helm. So for those of you poorly educated folks on the right wing, our jobs are not being stolen by foreigners. It is Canadian employers who are stealing them from us because they want compliant and obedient workers who aren't going to talk back. I know a bit about homelessness, having been there myself, and later on having spent more than a year working in a homeless shelter. There is always going to be more than what meets the eye, so to anyone who would care to ask, please refrain from judging and just try to imagine what it might be like to walk a mile in our shoes. Meanwhile, this city continues getting sold off, piece by piece, though there are indications that this is slowing down now and maybe one day some real change will begin to happen. In the meantime, I search desperately for quiet space, away from people yapping on their phones, away from testosterone charged joggers and cyclists and other narcissistic mouth-breathers whose absolute lack of courtesy or etiquette has made a quiet walk in the forest increasingly impossible to some of us. It is because this frantic consumerist capitalism that has swallowed us alive gives no quarter to contemplation, to quiet, to the cultivation of the spirit and soul, to the appreciation of nature and beauty, that is, unless they can slap a price tag on it. It is all about money, things, escape and thrill, and drugging yourselves on alcohol and sex. I am seeing this everywhere. I saw this downtown last night, early evening, following a coffee visit with a friend. The bars, pubs and sidewalks were all packed with regular folk out for a good time. It looked so scary and so ugly, so sad and angry, all of it and all of them. What has become of us, so that for so many of us, this kind of mass self-destruction has become our idea of having a good time? But it's good for the economy.

Balancing Act, 21

The fact of the matter, Gentle Reader, is this: we live with a lot of stress. Here is fact number 2: almost all of it is self-inflicted. Still with me? I will wait a few seconds till you have calmed down and climbed down from the chandelier. Now please accept this little reality check, Darlings. Stress has always been a fact of our human existence, ever since our earliest hominid ancestors were dodging the fangs of sabre-tooth cats and the horrendous paws of cave bears. Down through our troubled and very tumultuous human history we have had problems, danger, risks, stress. We have survived ice ages, wars, starvation and famine, earthquakes, massive social upheavals, the atomic bomb. And now we are also going to survive this age of the internet, invasive robots and President Dump, the Great Deplorable squatting in the Oval Office. This is part of our humanity. We are survivors and we are damn good at it. Even now during this era of politically correct hypersensitivity and suddenly we are all delicate little snowflakes and fragile flowers or outraged and insulted victims, even those of us who flourish in our threatened White Privilege. Absurdity upon absurdity. We are also going to get through all that, and maybe some of us are even going to get over our outrage and victimhood and our ingrained kneejerk impulse to justify our privilege, kiss and make up and hugs all around a we go striding off to the sunset together, hand in hand, arm in arm, singing Kumbaya in forty-part harmony. We are going to get through this odious nonsense, even if it means we will simply find and invent afterwards new and improved ways of hating each other. What do most of us think of when we think of the word stress? Likely it has something to do with the creeping and every resurgent anxiety that we are never going to get anything done adequately or on time, and that we are not going to harvest as many likes on social media as we are accustomed to. there is also the stress that comes from not knowing if we will make ends meet, if we will have to sell our home (those who are privileged enough to own) and downgrade to a cheaper condo, or (gasp and horrors!) turn into renters! I herd recently in the news that a growing number of well-incomed Canadians are unable to balance their books, are living with alarming levels of debt and are having to make all kinds of sacrifices in order to stay afloat. What kind of sacrifices? Maybe fewer visits to the nail spa?> No more gourmet treats for Fluffy or Baily or whatever they want to call their furred and four-legged dependent. It might mean having to sell one of your cars. Or maybe both of them and then number yourselves among the great unwashed, people like me, who have unashamedly been accessing the public transit system all our lives. It could mean few dinners out, fewer concerts, sports events. It could mean any number of small sacrifices. But my guess is that the vast majority of those people have already dug their own grave. Instead of opting to live more simply, within their means, instead of accepting a humbler way of life that is more humanly focussed and less contingent upon social status, they have opted for the Great Lie of western consumer capitalism, and oh how they cry and whine upon finding out just how unmerciful and cruel a goddess she really is! I also have my own areas of stress, almost all self-inflicted, though I have to admit that the low pay and less than adequate pay raise from my bosses is also a contributing factor. However, I still earn less than a living wage, unlike many, and I have long been accustomed to living comfortably within my means and without the daily luxuries that those poor little Brahmans have come to regard as essentials. For me, I would just like to be earning a little bit more so that I can do my grocery shopping within my own neighbourhood and get my prescription refilled at the Shoppers Drug Mart down the street, but those are expensive and for me untenable options, so I have to plan these things around traveling into other parts of town where I can access more affordable shopping options and still work everything in with my work schedule. And this causes stress. And I already live a lot more simply than most people. So, yes, Gentle Reader, we can reduce our stress if we are willing to lower our standards and live on a more human scale. It isn't impossible. And the next time I catch any of you whining about stress, I will be the first one to remind you that we no longer live in an era when a beautiful young queen would get her head chopped off simply for not giving birth to a child of her loathsome husband's preferred gender!

Balancing Act, 20

I received some rather shocking news yesterday. My blood pressure is high. Dangerously high. Except for when I was quite overweight for a while, my blood pressure has always been on the low normal range. Something needs to change. The nurse practitioner who saw me yesterday was very helpful and diplomatic about it. Knowing that my diet and exercise habits are very good, except perhaps for my proclivity for cheese, we agreed that there might be other temporary stresses upping the ante: for example that we were new to each other, the clinic was in a new location, and the ambience was very bright and sterile, etcetera. I think she could be right. But there have been other multiple factors I have been having to consider. One is salt. I have been using it more copiously lately in my cooking and in my general diet. So, it`s got to go. No more salt in my cocoa, or iced chocolate, and really it isn`t necessary to bring out the flavour. And I am severely cutting back on this brand of whole grain crackers I have come to enjoy because, they have a lot of salt in them. Cheese is another luxury I am going to have to curtail somewhat, but not completely. I have also decided to block out of my apartment all sounds that I find disagreeable and upsetting. earplugs for construction noise, frequent sirens, garbage and delivery trucks, and the mouth-breather in the building next door with the loud stereo, but there is even more I can do. So, I have decided to quit listening to the CBC. I used to enjoy their broadcasts, their news and current events and social interest programs, and some of them, sometimes are still good. But IO have these things against them: crappy music that is foisted on the hapless listeners, shallow Brahman-caste white folk on the programs who don't have a clue what it's like to be poor or to do without, and their ignorant comments about their first world problems and clear lack of empathy really grates on my nerves: and it isn't just the white, white people on the CBC, but also the white Chinese, the white Pakistanis, the white Aboriginals, the white Africans. I don't care what their skin colour might be, but it seems that the CBC style of diversity is to hire as many people who are every bit as white as they are but for the colour of their skin. And some of them are even whiter. But I especially object to the way they now use their programs for channeling the odious voice of the Douchebag-In-Chief, President Dump, the Great Deplorable squatting in the Oval Office in Washington DC. Day, after day we re subjected to his horrible lying voice, and this triggers me (and I suspect that many others as well are getting triggered by that mouth-breather), and the rage has likely been causing my blood pressure to spike. I think I am also chronically stressed just from the urgent and anxious voices and musings of these type-A journalists who often sound like they themselves are but one newscast away from a nervous breakdown. And I don't need to be hearing the same bad and awful noise and news over and over again on the same day. So, I am opting for silence, for a while anyway. And so far, it is wonderful., Yesterday afternoon when I came home the radio stayed off and I listened to classical music or enjoyed silence or watched nature documentaries in Spanish instead. This morning I treated myself to a long early walk and an extra nap. Of course, on top of everything else, I do have friends (no family, fortunately) about whom I care enough to get upset with, and this certainly hasn't been helping, and I am going to do more in my power to monitor my moods and my emotional reactions to some of them. But I am not going to stop caring. I will be safeguarding my home airspace in the future and doing my due diligence to keep myself calm and safely insulated from destructive and powerful persons and forces over which I have no or little control except insofar as how much their verbal and spiritual sewage is going to impact me. Stay tuned, Gentle Reader.

Balancing Act, 19

One of the hardest things to balance is sleep. It appears that fewer and fewer people can claim regular, restful and restorative sleep as one of the things they have to be grateful for. I am one of those poor wretches. One more time I woke up after four hours of sleep, then dozed for an hour, then tried to doze for another hour and a half and here I am, up, showered, dressed, preparing breakfast and waiting to go down for a nap. It is very difficult to do my kind of job on poor sleep. I am in a caring and supportive role with vulnerable adults, and no one needs to see me in a compromised state. I have become rather a good actor, not in terms of faking care and compassion, because those things cannot be feigned. People are way more astute than that. But I do have to fake being alert, not wanting to nod off to sleep in the middle of a client's distressed personal monologue, and to really control my emotions and anger if there is anything in the work day that is going to trigger me. I think of this as a kind of competition (with myself that is, and generally I get through these difficult days okay. And fortunately, I still sleep fairly well maybe five nights out of seven. There are many likely causes to my sleep difficulty. I used to think of it as trauma, but I'm no longer convinced. I first realized that I was a light sleeper when I was eighteen, and already knew that I could get by nicely on just six or six and a half hours of sleep every night. I was living at the time in a very difficult situation with my mother and her violent drunken boyfriend, and perhaps my sleep was suffering a bit around him. Even during my unstable summer that followed as I struck out on my own in Vancouver, my sleep usually did not suffer. I found my own apartment, a full time job, and continued to sleep well. For years, I would get by on six to eight hours a night. I was living in a succession of difficult situations, at times life-threatening. Then, when I was forty, it all began to change. I think I was already getting hit by trauma. I was kept awake by marathon toothaches, and then there was the succession of elephants living upstairs from me, followed by many other stresses from many other hominids of varying states of evolution, or lack thereof. Around that time in my life some real trauma was hitting, as well as the legacy of many years of garbage-bagged emotion and grief from the deaths of hundreds of people, chiefly the death of my mother. I would often be lying awake into the next day, lucky if I had been able to successfully keep my eyes closed longer than thirty minutes. I became homeless, couch-surfing between my father who hated me, except for such displays of filial obligation, and with various friends of dubious sincerity (I'm no longer in touch with any of those losers, so that will give you a clue). after I landed in some form of housing or other, it has since remained difficult for me to stay asleep. Spending a year working nights in an unsafe homeless shelter in 2003 didn't help either. I have come to realize that this is probably never going to change for me. I do sleep a little bit better, but on top of everything else now, I have these very strange and intense dreams. No, they are not nightmares because they are not frightening, and I actually look forward to revisiting those places of sleep. But while I was going through some of my dream journals from the last twenty-four years or so, I found one rather interesting nugget. I will share it with you in full: "Mon 20 March 95 I was in a room full of people-about forty. They were all friends with a protective benevolent interest in me. I asked one of them where he was from. He replied that he was dead, that they were all dead and living in the unseen. Then I realized that these were all my friends in the unseen and my heart rejoiced. Then I met a Christian family in a rural area. They invited me into their home and offered to pray over me together including their teenage son and daughter." I actually believe that this is really happening in my dreams, Gentle Reader, as none of the Jungian methods of dream-interpretation to which I am accustomed can offer me a single clue as to what has been happening. As far as getting enough sleep is concerned, I simply get up after six hours in bed, as I did this very early morning, then following breakfast, go down for a nap of a couple of hours, as I have also just done. It was rather an interesting dream. I was in a borrowed apartment somewhere in Colombia or Costa Rica, I think, preparing to return to my place here in Vancouver. And later on trying to avoid the second-hand smoke of a funny-looking little guy in a baggy cheap suit who was chomping on a cigar. Hey, I didn't say there isn't room for humour!

Balancing Act,18

How many of you, Gentle Reader, ever read the Urban Dictionary. How many of you would admit it? Do any of you find yourselves wishing that you didn't afterward? That is often my experience. Sites such as the Urban Dictionary, or, UD, exist of course to satisfy that one dominant characteristic that marks us as being incurably human: our relentless curiosity. I find myself hearing, or wondering about any vast range of things that really do not concern me, are none of my business, and certainly ought to be none of my business. Then a couple of days, weeks, months or years later, that little banked fire spits out just that one little spark and before you can say fire extinguisher you are in the midst of one raging bushfire. I have always known that I have had a relentless curiosity. Before the internet I was told that that was one of my defining characteristics, perhaps my single defining characteristic. Or to put it another way, if I had a previous life, I was probably a gossip columnist, which is to say that I will likely come back as a talk show host. My punishment. I was rather late in coming to the internet. I held out against computers for about seven years, till 2002, for the simple reason that I couldn't afford a personal computer, but also from the position of a neo-Luddite. But I was a neo-luddite with an insatiable, relentless and unforgiving curiosity. I always wanted to know, not just what, but how, and not only how, but why, and not only why, but who, and nut simply who, but when and where. But computers I found a little bit daunting. I have always been slow in the picking up technical skills department, and learning to use a computer with that absurd contraption called a mouse was just too much to think of. It was an employment counsellor I was seeing in 2001 who persuaded me to try the computers in her office. I somehow got stuck on copy, cut and paste, and I didn't really learn how to properly access Google search until sometime in 2004, or so, after one year or so of accessing the public internet computers in the downtown library. I already had email. I didn't get my own computer, a laptop until 2011, or sixteen years after the launching of the World Wide Web. Sixteen years. Why did it take me so long? Besides that it was a steep learning curve and because of my deep suspicion towards technology? Cost and expense, perhaps. I have always been a low-income earner, and only after my first nine years in my subsidized apartment, and seven years of gainful but low-paid employment, could I see that I had enough of a savings base in my bank account to accommodate such a luxury as home internet and my own laptop. I still don't have a smart phone, which I do not see as a necessity, though one day it is going to become a necessity and I will have to shove out and get one. Regardless the extra expense. Which could be one reason for so many Canadians claiming to be struggling financially even though they are not considered poor. It is from those goddam tech bills: home internet, wireless, phone, it all adds up. The computer and the internet, they have become necessities by default. You can't do anything without them. It's become impossible, unless you want to live in an Amish or Hutterite community, and that would involve just way too many tradeoffs. So now I have at my fingertips, Google, search engines, the world, the universe! Now I can give full play to my pesky and relentless curiosity. Except...I often can't think of anything to search for. Or I simply forget. Except for some things. There was an all female raunchy punk band that was pretty hot around twenty years ago or so. Their name? Stink Mitt. I wondered, for a long time, just what the hell that creepily suggestive name would mean. Then I forgot about it. For years. Then, the last few days, the name repeated on me like an undigested cucumber. I had to know. Yesterday, I looked it up. On the Urban Dictionary. I am not going to tell you what I read, Gentle Reader, and this is something that simply cannot be unread. I simply wish that I hadn't even bothered. Too late now. And don't expect to read on this page the definition of Stink Mitt. Not on this blog. You can look it up yourselves, on the Urban Dictionary. Go there only if you must, Gentle Reader. And don't say that I didn't warn you.

Balancing Act, 17

It really amazes me how absolutely clued out some people are about their need for others. These are often the self-defined introverts, who claim that they prefer their own company, don't need others, emotionally, don't need friends, that they don't need anybody. What absolute bullshit! Every single self-defined introvert I know, who has made these claims have certain supports in their lives that they have forgotten completely about, or don't seem to know that they even exist. For one thing, they all have families. Even the ones who are here from other countries, and certain of these individuals have very doting and involved mamas who phone, text, message, Skype and email their darling little mouth breathers every single day. Or they have various other friends who are stupidly devoted to these narcissistic hominids and hardly a week will go by without at least a couple of phone calls or texts. For such individuals, it is so very easy to say, "well, I prefer being alone. I can't understand why some people need to be in contact or surrounded by friends all the time." They have no idea why it is so easy for them to say that. They are so used to the daily, or unobtrusive presence and support of loved ones in their undeserving lives, that they really have never known what it really is like to be absolutely alone, which is anathema to the human condition. Any one who knows about the silent torture known as solitary confinement will know what I'm talking about. The inmate, or patient, is locked in a tiny cell with nothing but a mattress and (if they're lucky) a toilet, and they can be left in there for months. No human contact. No fresh air breaks. This is considered torture and is a very effective and particularly cruel form of destroying a human being (no, Gentle Reader, they aren't allowed to have their phone with them!). I am writing today's post with certain friends in mind, by the way. These are people who claim to prefer solitude over the company of others. These same individuals have families, spouses, girlfriends, very involved parents and other friends who care enough to stay in touch and invite them places. And they always have their dear little smart phone to keep them company. So, my friends, my dear introverted hominids, I am going to present you with this little challenge: Try to imagine what it is like for someone like me. For this to happen, both your parents have to be already, and long, dead. If you have a sibling, they hate you so profoundly and completely that you haven't seen each other in decades and you don't even know if they're still alive. As far as all other relatives are concerned, you'd might as well be dead because they haven't done anything to acknowledge your existence in many, many years. You also have to give up your phone, because that ain't going to be around to keep you company, and in my case, I can't even afford that small luxury. That's right, you also have to be poor, to know what it is like to be me. On top of everything else, none of your friends will bother to initiate contact with you. You are the one who is always phoning or emailing or texting and asking if they would like to see you, because no one cares enough to check in on you from time to time and you could be dead or in hospital for weeks or months before they will even know about it, much less care. and, no, I am not feeling sorry for myself. This is the way it is for a lot of us, and I at least have friends, even if they often don't act like friends. Still love your dear little solitude? Didn't think so. And please stop judging me for wanting to be with people. Not until you have walked one or two kilometres in my shoes. If you still want me for a friend, start by being a friend.

Balancing Act, 16

I just read an interesting article, a column in the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente, where she poses the idea that genetics have something to do with succeeding in life. Well--DUH!!! I rather thought that Charles Darwin had already made that abundantly clear in his Origin of the Species and his theories about natural selection. Isn't this also the basis for market capitalism? Survival of the fittest? I have to give Ms. Wente credit for her use of context, however. It is well-understood in liberal-progressive circles that social and economic disadvantage are the major vectors for breeding generations of losers dependent on social welfare services and prone to committing crime all of their short little lives, generation, after generation, after generation. That if only we were to do everything possible to level the playing field and equalize the life circumstances of children born in poverty and in socially and racially marginalized communities, that we would have more poor kids making it through high school and getting into university and graduating and finding nicely paid positions making them faithful little taxpayers and contributors to the common good for the rest of their rather longer little lives. Could be. But then Ms. Wente weighs in with the idea that genetics, and not social conditioning are more likely to determine a child's future success in life. Successful high-earning professionals are, after all, more likely to marry each other, and their progeny is going to enjoy that magic genetic alchemy that will guarantee a lifetime of winnings in the silver spoon lottery. That actually does make sense, but one should also factor in all the other advantages: a stable marriage, a nice home, a comfortable family income, social status, profession and connection, and the expectations and encouragement, all beginning from the cradle and earlier and well into adolescence, that their little mini-me is going to do well, do successfully, and make it life. Not all privileged offspring are necessarily going to do equally well, but they sure as hell have a better start than most people. In my own family we had one professionally successful sibling--my brother, three years older than me. And one loser--me. My father, incidentally, loved my older brother. My father didn`t love me. At all. No lines to read between here. My brother went on to enjoy a stellar and very lucrative career in radio broadcasting, though his addiction to cocaine eventually felled him, along with the fierce competition from younger rival candidates for his position. The marketplace is the mother of all blood sports. I had a strong artistic, intellectual and literary proclivity. I was also, unlike the rest of my family, a strong Christian with a very delicate conscience and an unquenchable zeal for social justice. I also grew up queer in an era and a family absolutely hostile to people who existed on that spectrum. My brother was quite average, very popular and well-liked, and an abusive sibling with rage issues. We have never reconciled. I was diagnosed as gifted with a much higher than average IQ. As well as questionable genes and a crappy family environment and being otherwise unusual, I had to get through the full range of abuse from every member of my family, ostracism from my peers, and my parents' divorce. Win the silver spoon lottery? I couldn't even afford a ticket. Even though it would be only too easy to call myself a loser who didn't work hard enough. And Peggy, or Margaret Wente, I do have this one single issue about your column this weekend. You insinuate that people born with the right sets of genes are also going to work harder. Harder than whom? I have worked very hard all my life, struggling to just survive most of the time, much less move forward, and when people like us are told that we are not successful because we did not work hard enough simply is not true. It is a lie of privilege and it is a huge slap in the face and for this reason, you and your ilk owe the millions who scrub your toilets, serve your food and coffee, cook and bring you your brunch, and wipe the backsides of your frail and infirm parents and grandparents who languish inside nursing home a huge apology. So, between me and my brother (so sue me, Rick Greenlaw, also known as Rick Shannon!), who is the real success story and who is the real loser? Even though I have been poor all my life I have not sat idly. True, I never swallowed the Koolaid of consumerism and capitalist materialism that has become the drug of contemporary Canadian culture, and for this reason I do not drive a car, and I do not own my own home. But my life has been predicated upon the values of the Christian Gospels: to care for others, to be kind, compassionate, to love justice, and to offer my life in service and sacrifice to others, doing so joyfully and with beauty and grace. There is absolute squat, dick-freaking all in our Canadian ethos that will accommodate people like me, so of course we end up marginalized and worse. But you know, something Gentle Reader? Without our prayers, our love, our care, our ministrations, and all the many ways that we bust our sorry ass to help care for and nurture the rest of you ungrateful bastards, this would be a much poorer harsher and much less kind place for people to live in. It is time to give us, the little ones who love God and humanity, our due, and to start adjusting and indexing this satanically harsh and ugly Neo-Darwinist playing field so that even people like me, who work as hard or even harder than you privileged idiots, can also live in dignity!

Balancing Act, 15

I have come to believe that LED headlights are the sign of the coming Apocalypse. Once you have stopped gasping and gagging, Gentle Reader, how about if I explain myself a little...Feeling better? Have you coughed it all up, now? Okay. LED headlights are the sign of the coming Apocalypse. I was first treated to that blinding spectacle some twenty years ago. I was in those days technically homeless. Three to four days a week I stayed with my father in his rented two-bedroom cabin in Robert's Creek, on BC's fabled Sunshine Coast, but a forty minute ferry ride from the Lower Mainland. The balance of the week I would couch surf with various friends in Vancouver. Not an easy arrangement, but it did work for the ten and a half months I was homeless, and thanks to my father (who came to hate me, or likely always did) and various friends, (almost all of whom now are ex-friends) in Vancouver. One night, following a walk in Robert's Creek, I was walking along the local road, on my way back to my father's. Two menacing glowing eyes from hell suddenly appeared from around the bend and I had to shield my eyes, they were so white, cruel and blinding. In my rage at this unnecessary use of high beam headlights I treated the occupant of said SUV to my best middle finger. Being a remnant member of a primitive species of hominid, he reacted by threatening me and refused to admit that those were high beams. The young woman, who appeared to be one of us, told him to leave me alone. He did relent, probably knowing that, as consequence, he might have to face a night of sleeping alone. Over the years this has only worsened. Increasingly, first at night, it was becoming harder and harder to enjoy a quiet walk without having to shield my eyes every block or so. I need my eyes. I am an artist and I do want to have functioning retinas in my old age. Now it's in the middle of the day. On bright, sunny summer days. And this is everywhere. I can no longer enjoy an otherwise quiet and lovely walk in a leafy neighbourhood without some remnant hominid blinding me with their LED highlights in broad daylight. I just cover my eyes now. Sometimes imprecate: Your headlights, unlike you, are bright!" And now its all over the traffic as other cars, vehicles, delivery and service trucks, as well as buses and garbage trucks (no, Gentle Reader, they are NOT the same thing, and please get your thin white little nose out of the air!) being outside, day or night has turned into a visual Armageddon as blinding headlights make life hell for pedestrians and other drivers. And it's all because LED lights are incredibly cheap and energy efficient. And blinding. We are just waiting for the lawsuits to come rolling in. In the meantime, no one seems to care. Pedestrians make up a marginalized and often cash-poor minority and no one driving those climate changing monsters is going to give a rat's heiny about this, as they drive off in to their very important business and pleasure of the day. They are privileged. They worship and serve the Economy God. Therefore they are exempt. The rest of us will have to simply invest in sunglasses, or go on looking the other way.

Balancing Act, 14

I will open, Gentle Reader, with the selection for 12 September from the daily devotional, God Calling: "The eye of the soul is the will. If your one desire is My Kingdom, to find that Kingdom, to serve that Kingdom, then truly shall your whole body be full of light. When you are told to seek first the Kingdom of God, the first step is to secure that your will is for that Kingdom. A single eye to God’s glory. Desiring nothing less than that His Kingdom come. Seeking in all things the advance of His Kingdom. Know no values but Spiritual values. No profit but that of Spiritual gain. Seek in all things His Kingdom first. Only seek material gain when that gain will mean a gain for My Kingdom. Get away from money values altogether. Walk with Me. Learn of Me. Talk to Me. Here lies your true happiness." First of all, I didn't know that that would be the text today. I simply, during my prayer-time this morning received a mental impression of page 177 in my copy of God Calling, which I read from every morning. I find this to be a more timely way of reading this book than day by day according to the dates, as this way I get much clearer and more specific guidance, confirming things, and at times correcting things in my life that need to be addressed, which is to say that, yes, I believe that God wants to communicate with us, with all of us, one to one, and I think this happens oftener than many of us realize, or will give credit to, and it needs to happen more. This particular passage addresses a small conundrum I found myself in yesterday. While I was out with a client, we stopped into the local No Frills, or, Food Dollarama, as I like to call it. Without going into details that would compromise my client's confidentiality, we were doing this to help him acclimatize to shopping independently. This is when I noticed a fabulous special on strawberries, just two bucks a box. So, I picked up two, not realizing that someone had set in the much more expensive (double the cost) organic strawberries with the ones on sale. I didn't trouble to carefully read the different labels, being in a hurry to be sure that my client was okay. When I paid for the strawberries, I noticed that I was given less change than I expected, and didn't have time to look at everything properly until I got home. Sure enough, I was charged two dollars for one box of regular strawberries, and three-ninety-seven for the other box of the organic berries. I did not know they were organic, otherwise, I would not have bought them, being as I am, on a tight budged and a low income, and organics is really a niched market for the well-heeled. I was wroth. Two dollars I had sacrificed for this mistake and when you are working poor, two dollars is still a lot of money. On the other hand, a coffee visit with some friends for that day after work had been cancelled, and therefore I would still be saving a few cents,. But I was still upset, feeling, as it were, cheated. I telephoned the store, talked to the representative (thanks Jason!) who was very understanding and tactful, and promised that they would see that from now on they keep the more expensive organics well apart, because it is likely I'm not the only shopper who fell for this little ruse. I was still upset, though. Then I switched on the radio to hear the concluding segment of an interview with someone mentioning that one out of ever five people who live in my city have to go without proper food because housing and other things are so expensive here. That was just the reality check that was needed. I have enough to eat. More than enough. One of my favourite sayings: "Never complain about a fridge that is too full." And in one of my dreams last night I was hosting a dinner party for a number of travellers staying in a hostel I was running, and there was a huge abundance of food to prepare for them, though things were kind of scattered and disorganized. What has come across loud and clear to me, Gentle Reader, is that I am rich. I have more than enough. However, there is something about our inherent acquisitive greed and selfishness that leaves us feeling poor and empty, no matter how much we already have. it's like this woman in Nova Scotia (Halifax, I think), who is on the news after winning 1.2 million dollars in the lottery. She wrote the name of her nephew, whom she says she raised, or helped to raise like her own son, on the ticket, for good luck. Now, said nephew wants his half of the pickings. Auntie says, "No, sweetie.) And now her beloved little darling is taking her to court over it. I am not about to take sides on this one, and I remain to this day dead-set against lotteries or any form of gambling for the simple reason that they summon forth that nastiest of human traits: GREED. We never seem to have enough: like those wealthy burghers in Shaughnessy and other well-off neighbourhoods who erect ugly and angry lawn signs in protest of the tiny extra tax on homes valued at over 3 million dollars. No doubt they can afford to pay that little extra, or they can defer payment till after the house is sold and the balance they will still be getting back from their equity will still be more than enough to set them up nicely for the rest of their lives. But too much is never enough. Hence this warning in today's reading from God Calling.

Balancing Act, 13

I had to get up and move yesterday to a quieter area of the Gallery Café, when a group of four women with an obnoxious toddler decided to park right next to me. It was an otherwise quiet morning, I was enjoying bringing a new drawing towards its conclusion, and the last thing I needed, while soaking up the tranquility, listening to soft recorded classical music, and feasting my eyes on all the flowers was to be serenaded by the screams of a squalling, entitled and badly spoiled little mouth breather. Now, to all you child lovers, and your kneejerk reactions: CHILL!!!!!! I actually like kids. Well, some kids, anyway. It depends on the kid. In another regular coffee shop I saw a tall handsome and super athletic jock daddy bring in his little mini-me and I wanted that kid out of there, fast. He was noisy, entitled, would not shut up and was into everything. Surely another casualty of the self-esteem school of parenting, or child-dominant parenting. They left quickly (thank heavens) and in came another young dad with his little boy. Asian background but likely several generations Canadian. The first father-son act was white. (not that it matters, but I just think, from experience and observation, that Asians are much better parents). This kid was also active, and into everything, and even a little bit noisy. But I liked this kid. The room wasn't being filled with infantile ego and entitlement. He seemed like an honestly good, nice kid excited about life. This was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I was afraid that I was turning into a nasty child hater, but I'm not really. I just hate nasty children. And even more, I hate the nasty parents that are badly raising them. Such as those who, when their little ankle-biter is having a decibel-intense meltdown, they don't know enough to get them outside, now, and give them time to calm down. Like the lawyer in another coffee shop seated next to me with her year old kid, who started screaming and crying to beat the band. I moved quickly to the other side of the room, and she did apologize (she was also Asian-Canadian, by the way, but I think she might have been just having a bad day.) The white daddy looked positively arrogant, like the white mommy with her little girl yesterday at the Gallery Café. I understand, that it isn't easy being a parent. I also appreciate the need to get out of the condo and that finding a babysitter isn't always the appropriate action, and that it is good for the child to get early exposure to public places. But when I see how unengaged a lot of these parents are with their children, totally focussed on their phones (and not usually because it's something urgent), or so occupied with their friends or significant others that, is it any wonder the kids are going to act out. Or, they treat their children like their best friends, without apparently considering the importance of discipline and setting boundaries, and I don't mean hitting the kids (hitting the parents, maybe!) but making it clear that there are expectations of behaviour, even for a two year old, and consequences if they are not complied with. And either way, it often goes too far. Like, several years ago the frustrated dad in Niagara falls who was thrown in jail overnight because his five year old daughter had him busted for spanking her. The brat's offence? Slamming the car door on the fingers of her two year old little brother. Now, I don't advocate spanking, though I still have my doubts, but that scenario could have been handled very differently, and a lot more effectively. For example, daddy need not have ended up in jail, perhaps just a chat with the officer about what had happened and some strategies for nonviolent discipline, and that little monster still should have been dealt with severely for what she did to her sibling. Or something like that, but when emotions take control then we'd might as well lock ourselves in the panic room till it's safe to come out again. Seriously, though, I think that parents for the most part really need to overhaul the way they are raising their children and give special attention to monitoring and controlling their kids' behaviour, especially when in public. In defense of older people who don't have kids, I think that our rights are often undervalued and our needs also need to be accommodated and respected. If there wasn't such a public hate-on for older people. For example, last year in a small BC community on Vancouver Island there was a small child having a very loud and violent meltdown in the local Boston Pizza on a Sunday morning. A gentleman of a certain age was quietly reading his newspaper, then suddenly and violently yelled at the child and his parents to shut up, and I think he even swore at them. Understandable reaction, if not justifiable. Now it could be considered that they were in a Boston Pizza, and those places are family and kid friendly, and not at all quiet. I was only inside one once and never again, but that's another story. Everyone condemned and castigated this man and he has been barred from life from this establishment. An overreaction? Of course. Everyone came in defense of the poor child and his family. No one considered the emotional or mental wellbeing of the man who objected. Selective compassion. All said and done, in our rapidly densifying cities, quiet public space is becoming increasingly scarce, small and precious. We can no longer reasonably expect quiet space anywhere outside of our own homes. Not on the bus, nor in the café or restaurant, and certainly not in parks. It isn't just badly raised children but it's also technology, with so many solitary people yapping loudly on their phones. It's better, I think, to continue to go out, but to brace ourselves and lower our expectations. And be flexible. And forearmed. No bear spray please, and not even to be used on the brats' parents. You would get arrested. Earplugs, or noise cancelling headphones, maybe, and the willingness to get up and move, or even leave if it gets too noisy and riotous. No one is going to leave or move for any of us, so we are the ones who have to adapt. Unfortunately.

Balancing Act, 12

The juggling fool at the centre has long been for me a strong and powerful metaphor. This goes back to my late twenties when I was reading the Christian mystical fiction (more magic realism) of Charles Williams. I can't go into a lot of detail here, and if you want more information, Gentle Reader, simply Google his name and don't say I didn't warn you. In one of his novels, the Greater Trumps (nothing at all to do with the loathsome ogre in the White House) he deals a lot with archetypes using figures from the Tarot, especially the Fool. This was when I first embraced the Fool as being my own central unifying force. He had always been there, at the centre of my being, just as he lives at the centre of our universe, juggling his multitudinous brightly coloured balls, those cardinal realities that hold our humanity and our place in the universe intact. The Fool is a most peculiar and outstanding fellow, or should I say, archetype? We think of him as the clown, the jester or the comedian. And yes, these are all faces of the Fool. But there is also there a nimble grace and shimmering beauty that radiates through the humour and jest. They hold each other in place. It is the oddest sense of balance. Hee are some words with which I would describe the Fool: impossible to define; humble; joyous; ironical; creative; dynamic; obscure; colourful; compassion; empathy; wholeness; movement; light; grace; diversity; vulnerable; lover of truth; universal; visionary; absurd; courageous; imaginative; kind; impossible to pin down; eloquent; beautiful; nimble; silent; music; silly; self-deprecating, state of flux and dance; playful; spiritual, holy and sacred; self-sacrificing; resilient; risk; danger; flirtatious; always being reborn and recreated; juggler. I could go on, and these are merely lame and inadequate adjectives for describing what is essentially indescribable. Those are not necessarily my personal qualities, perhaps some, there are others that I aspire to. some that I find rather frightening. And, of course, why would anyone want an archetype so obviously unreliable and flaky to be at the very centre of things. But the Fool is at the very centre and heart of the universe, for the Fool is also the image of Christ, the image of God made incarnate in our very imperfect humanity. When I was in Bogota, Colombia, I was particularly intrigued by some of the street jugglers I encountered. Their skill was something amazing, but it wasn't simply their skill, but their stupid and reckless daring, making them at the moment the very image of the Fool. Whether the young man standing in front of traffic stopping at a red light to show his tricks and juggling licks (and if you have experienced the horrible drivers and dreadful traffic of Bogota, you will have an idea of to which I am referring. Then there were the two bicycle jugglers in what must be one of the world's most dangerous traffic circles. I myself got so sick of almost getting killed while negotiating that miserable traffic snare, that I began to detour on a pedestrian overpass nearby. For those of you who have lived in Bogota, you will know it: it is at calle 100 and Carrera 15. So there they were, the two daring young men, balancing, standing on top of their bikes and steering them with their legs while juggling more balls than I could count. So dances the Fool. But the Fool, no matter how many times he falls or is toppled, will always land on his feet, and rises up again to continue to scandalize the world.